10 Questions Every Singles and Doubles Player Needs Answered

On today's episode of the podcast, I'm going to be answering 10 questions directly from you, the listeners, and we're going to cover singles tactics, doubles tactics, poaching, and how you can prepare for a match. So let's get started. All right, question number one. How do strong players balance thinking about improving versus accepting what they have and playing good strategic tennis with Should they use swing thoughts in actual matter?

This is a great question and honestly the answer doesn't differ if you're advanced or a beginner. It will be the same answer regardless. And the first thing you want to do is analyze what match, tournament, or league you're in and how important the outcome is. So if we were to take an extreme example like the Wimbledon final.

I'm pretty sure when players go into the Wimbledon final, they're not thinking about improvement. They probably honestly are just thinking about winning that trophy. And that's what matters more than anything. So let's say they were working on a forehand going into that Wimbledon final.

I think if it wasn't working well in that match, they would throw a band-aid on it and either start slicing, start coming to the net, or even revert to the old technique, because in that particular setting, the win means everything.

Now that being said, there's gonna be a ton of matches and tournaments you play where improvement is by far the top priority and the outcome is secondary. So I'll give you an example from me. When I was a junior, I actually grew up with a two hand, forehand. So it was also a lefty backhand. So I had

Right hand on top on this side and I had to switch. And when I was twelve years old, my coach told me, Hey, you're gonna have to switch to a one hand, four hand eventually. This is gonna be a big liability in the future. So we switched to that one hand forehand, and after a couple weeks I started playing tournaments again. Now I want to win in those tournaments and I'm competing hard, but also I'm not going to go back to a two hand forehand if my one handed forehand started to struggle.

So I did take a few losses in the process that maybe I wouldn't have taken with the two-hand, four hand, but the ultimate goal was improvement and long-term growth. And so you're always balancing those two things. How important is the outcome of this particular match? versus my long term growth. And there's no problem with throwing on band-aids occasionally.

Again, some matches mean more than others. It's okay to want to compete, but obviously you don't want to sacrifice your long-term growth in that process. All right, question number two, how do you prepare for a match tactically? Honestly, the first and most important thing, and I find most players don't do this, is you have to know yourself inside and out.

You have to know exactly what your strengths are and exactly what your weaknesses are, and it can't just be I have a good forehand. It might be I have a good inside out forehand when someone hits a top spin ball to me, or it might be that I have a great backhand slice when the ball is low and I'm in the ad court. But you have to be very specific. And honestly, you cannot do this without video and charting stats.

It's one thing that most players are reluctant to do. They don't want to set up a tripod or hang a pole on the back fence. But if you don't have objective data about your matches, You're just going to go on feelings. And a lot of times people have confidence in things that aren't actually that great. So they might tell me, I'm such, I have such a good forehand. And then I'll watch it on tape.

And they hit five winners but made 20 errors. And I would argue that's probably not the definition of a great forehand, but they might have confidence or it might feel good. So step number one is know your strengths and weaknesses inside and out. Step number two is you're going to try to align tactics to those strengths.

So I had a great serve and I had great volleys. So what do you think I'm going to do when I get into a match? I'm going to serve and volley as often as possible. Now I also have to have a backup plan and understand that things might not go perfect.

So option number one for me was I'm gonna serve out wide in the deuce, hit a nice little backhand valley cross court and put pressure on someone that On the ad court, I would probably still slice that serve T, and maybe backhand volley cross court behind him or forehand volley cross court to the open court.

But what happens when I'm playing a good returner and they start putting the ball at my feet and I can't win points that way? I already have to have a secondary option in mind. So maybe I know I'm gonna stay back and rip that first ground stroke middle, or even stay back and try to approach on that first ball.

just so it's a different look. But you need to have a primary and a secondary tactic planned for all cases. And the third thing that you want to do, and this would happen during the match, not necessarily before, but you're paying attention in the warm up in the first couple games to what your opponent likes and doesn't

You're looking for what makes them look physically uncomfortable or where you can see signs of frustration when they miss a shot. This is a good indicator that they don't like something. And so obviously at the end of the day, you want to match up your strengths versus their weakness. So let's say I love my forehand and after a couple games I can see that you hate your backhand.

That means I'm going to try to hit a lot of runaround forehands to that ad court and maybe occasionally in the deuce court hit some down the line forehands. And finally, just remember that a bad plan is better than no plan. And I find a lot of players show up to matches and they don't have a plan at all.

So, know what you want to do with your serve. Know what you want to do with your plus one. Know what your strengths are. Do you want to come to the net? Do you want to stay back? Do you want to play offense or defense? Even if you have a general idea and afterwards when you video and chart it, you might learn you were wrong, but at least if you show up with your plan, you have a chance.

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This is arguably the most important part of any match. And tennis is a really weird sport with the scoring where you would never say you won an inning in baseball, or you won a quarter in basketball, or you won the first half in soccer. You could be leading after those things, but you haven't technically won anything.

In tennis, you can literally win the first set. That is yours. You the score was 6'3. They cannot take that away from you. And because you showed up to the match with the goal to win and you have technically already won something, the tendency is to relax. But the reality is you haven't won what you showed up for.

Your goal was to win two sets and you've only won one, you're halfway there, and you're also about 20 minutes away from being equal if your opponent gets off to a fast start. So I want you to view the beginning of the second set as one of the most important parts of the match. So even if you lost the first set, let's say my opponent beat me six three, that's a chance where I can maybe jump on them, get up a break, and even this match very quickly if I catch them snoozing or relaxing.

Now if I'm the player who won the first set, I'm viewing it as an opportunity to step on my opponent's throat. They might be down, they might be sulking, and if I can get up that quick break, now I'm up six three three oh or six three three one. And they might just go away. They might just not try anymore, right? So that's a big opportunity. Now, if I try my hardest and play smart tennis and they either get up a break on me or we're still holding serves.

No sweat, I got plenty of time, but don't view that as a time to relax, view it as a time to step on the gas. Now, if we want to get specific with what you can actually do to get off to that fast start in the second set, besides valuing it as an important part of the match, number one is have great physical and emotional energy right off the bat. Very confident, very positive, and then moving around with your feet.

The second thing is with your game, and this goes back to tactically what we talked about, you're playing your best stuff to start that second set. You haven't relaxed.

You're going with your best serves. You're trying simple plus ones. But if you go with your best stuff and you're ready for that challenge, I find oftentimes you can get a big start in that second set. All right, question number four. My serve feels very confidence-based where a few bad ones can ruin the whole match. How do I fix it?

So there's two things here, and I heard this a couple years ago and I've mentioned on the podcast before, but that's the idea of permission slip. So if you had a great serving day, your first serve is probably sixty to sixty-five percent. That's a great day. That means you're missing one out of every three first serves. So there would be no reason to panic if you showed up and missed the first serve of the match and it felt terrible.

You know you're gonna miss thirty-three out of a hundred serves on a great day. So the idea of the permission slip is just simple that you walk out and you go, hey, you know what? I'm allowed to miss one out of every three or two out of every five. And that means I'm having a great day. And when you get rid of that panic and you get rid of the expectation that every service is supposed to feel good.

It can take a lot of pressure off, which relaxes your body. Intention is the number one stroke killer. So the permission slips is something that's worked really well for me and my players. You go out, you have an idea of how many serves you can miss before you get upset. So let's just take this first serve example. Maybe you say I can start to panic about my serve and the quality of my serve and the technique after I've missed fifteen first serves.

Which hopefully would be somewhere near the beginning of the second set. Even just saying that out loud and giving yourself the permission will free you up. So I definitely like the idea of a permission. Now the second part of this question was this player loses confidence when they miss serves. And one question I always ask players when I start working with them is how do you specifically gain confidence? So every player is different. Some players only get confidence by winning tennis matches.

And it might not even matter the level of the opponent. So if they go out and beat someone way below them and they win 10 times in a row and they have 10 straight wins, they think they're playing awesome, whether their performance is great or not. Some people like reps, so they're working on a serve, and if they just go out and know they hit 200 serves every day for a month, that gives them confidence because they think they've earned their results.

Some players get confidence from feelings, and this is probably where I landed as a player, but they worked hard until they had a feeling or an understanding for the shot. And even if they hadn't used it in a tournament yet, or even if they hadn't gotten every single rep in, they had a feeling and a thought in their mind and that gives them.

At the end of the day, confidence is king. It might be the most important thing you walk onto the court with. So you need to do some soul searching, figure out which one of those three ways you gain confidence from, and then start building that before the match starts. Once you get into the match, using those permission slips will help you stay relaxed and help you deal with some bad things.

All right, question number five. How have you kept parents' expectations on the same page as you and the players?

I'm gonna take this in a general sense so it's not just about a parent's expectation versus a player and coach. It can be coaches' expectations, players' expectations about themselves. I've said this many times. I think expectations are very dangerous. I think you should focus on standards. So when you step on the court and you say, Oh, I'm playing a weaker player, I think I should win.

I would advise just not wasting your time. If you go out and play the match, we're going to find out in two hours if you won or not. So we don't have to waste our time on that. We want to focus on standards. So a good example of a standard would be I run for every ball, or I have a positive attitude no matter what, or I stick to the tactics that me and my coach talked about before the match. Those are process-based and those are things you can do every single match.

And obviously, if you execute your standards, you will probably have better outcomes. Expectations can be super toxic. And a lot of people will even say, well, if I work hard, I should have good results. The expectation that all that hard work will pay off. I don't even have that if I'm being honest. All I know is that hard work

can build some character in me and gives me the best chance to improve, but it doesn't necessarily guarantee it. I have definitely worked hard on things for six months and felt like I've gotten worse. And that's part of the deal. And if you're patient and keep working hard, maybe you'll end up overcoming that.

But expectations are a very dangerous thing. So I would just focus on standards, pick three to five that matter to you that you think will give you the best chance to have an outcome and focus on those standards. All right, question number six. At my level, I see returners using the server's motion to identify called poaches. Where, how, when should the server move on a poach?

So in this situation, the servers hit a serve, and before the returner hits the ball, they are already running down the line to cover for their partner who's going to poach. And the returner can see that. And they change their mind and go down the line. Now, obviously, a lot of this depends on your speed. If you're an older player in your 70s with two knee replacements, maybe you're not that fast.

My best advice though is I would not run to cover the line until the ball is hit there. So a lot of servers panic and think they're supposed to get every ball. You're supposed to just do your best. And honestly, if it was a singles match and someone hits a return down the line in the singles court, you're going to get to 80 to 90% of those. You're not going to get to something in the doubles alley, but that's also a great return. So I would advise the server to really just stay put.

and read the ball, knowing that eventually you might have to run to that line, but you don't have to take off so early. Now like I said, if you're a slower player and you're not going to get many balls if you hold your ground, you want to time it just like you would time a poach at the net. So right when that returner is dropping their racket and they're about to hit it.

That is when you could start to move towards the line. But if you hit your serve and you just immediately bolt over there, number one, you're actually getting there too early and you're ruining all the disguise. And the whole reason behind the play was to get that net player the ball, not for you to run and get that downline ground stroke.

So time it on the drop of the racket or if you're a faster player, just hold tight. All right, question number seven. How can I improve my reaction time so I can poach more? I just posted an Instagram reel on this, but it's really not about reactions, it's about anticipation.

So if you watch me or hopefully someone much better than me play doubles, you might watch my hands at the net or the way I'm poaching and think I have great reactions. But if you take me outside the sport of tennis and give me F one reaction drills or I'm doing eye flashing lights and I'm tapping buttons.

My reaction times are not any better. The reason why they look better in tennis is because I know where the ball's going. So there's a couple ways to know where the ball's going. Number one, it can just be pure tendencies and I've mentioned this a million times, but I'm going to say it a million and one now. The three best times to poach are early in the match, early in the point, and when the score is close. And this is because in all three of those situations we have

Players tend to play very conservatively, intentively. They just want to make balls, which means the ball will go through the middle of the court. And when I poach, I'll be there. So if you have no ability to read your opponent or any situation and you just took that as blanket truth.

you'll probably be right about 80% of the time. Now the second part about anticipating is actually reading your opponent's body language and also just reading them on a psychological level. So sometimes you can see which way they're leaning and they'll probably hit the ball in that direction. Or you might just read them and go, you know what, there's someone who loves to go down the line. Or if I poached on them once, they always hit down the line on the next time.

Or what is also most common is if they hit a down the line winner on me once, their next ball will go cross court because they think I learned my lesson. So as long as you're anticipating, you don't have to rely on reactions and being so fast.

A lot of players tell me they can't poach because they're older or they don't move as well. But the reality is I could probably walk and poach, even though I'm a taller player, because I know where the ball is going and I'm moving at the right times. So I would highly recommend focusing on anticipation over reality. All right, question number eight.

What is the best return strategy when you go against an aggressive net player? First of all, you're gonna lob, you're gonna lob, and then you're gonna lob some more. I'm totally fascinated as a coach how the lob has the stigma to it, like it's a less than shot.

Or you play this weird style of tennis. If you are playing someone at the net, And they cover big parts of the court and they're balanced and they poach half the time and they stay half the time and they have good volleys, they're gonna get a lot of ball. And the safest and simplest way to get around them is to actually go over them with a lob. And here's the thing about the lob. If you execute it well, you hit it in the back six feet of the court.

Even if someone gets that ball, they can't really hurt you from that deep in the court. But if I rip a cross-court return, even if it's great, if that person anticipated it and picked it off, they can still hit a volley winner even on my best shot.

So the beauty of the lob is if you execute it well, it's almost guaranteed to work. Now the other beautiful thing about the lob is once it starts working, you might move your opponent back off the net. So I used to hit chip lob four hand returns all the time. Now after I've done that three times in a row, maybe my opponent at the net starts one foot deeper or one full step deeper. Now when I hit my normal cross court return, it's not as easy as a volley. So we're playing a little bit of catamal.

I might lob them a couple times, then go back to my normal dip or return. Once they come up again, I lob them again. But the lob is the safest way to play against a great net player. The other element of playing against someone good at the net is the formation you and your partner play on the return. So if I go against someone who's awesome at the net, whether I'm lobbying or trying to go around them,

We're probably going to play two back because we don't want that guy to have an easy volley at our net player. We want them to have to work for it. And a lot of times, even if that net player gets the ball, but you're two back, you can get their volley and probably steer it back to the server who's usually still on the baseline. So not only would I lob more, but I would also play more two back in that formation.

All right, question number nine. What is the best strategy when your doubles partner is getting attacked at the net? All right, so in this situation, it's either your serve is weak, your ground strokes are weak, and they're stepping up and ripping at your partner.

Or the other team is just high quality and they hit a little bit better ball than you and they're on offense quite a bit. At the end of the day, you want common sense to be your guide. So let's say your opponents are always stepping up and ripping the ball and they're going fast to the net play. If you were at the net, would you want to stay there and get ripped at, or would you just want to go back to the baseline?

A lot of people feel like there are rules about the formation you have to play and I have to stay at the deck because my partner's serving. If they're drilling balls at me, I would go all the way back and play two back, whether that's on your serve or your return.

And at the end of the day, don't be afraid to think outside the box and let common sense be your guide. There are no rules. You can do whatever you want to solve these problems. So again, if someone's ripping balls and you're missing bolleys.

You can back up to the baseline, right? Problem solved. You're missing a ton of balls in the net. Aim higher. That's common sense. A lot of times you would actually know the answer to a lot of questions you would have on the court if you just gave it a common sense approach.

And final question of the day, how effective is Australian formation in modern day tennis? Now you all know I love to talk about poaching and being aggressive at the net, but using different formations might be my new big thing for 2026.

If I travel across the country to any club, I know I'm going to see some version of a one up one back, normal cross-court, standard regular formation. Now the beauty of Australian is you're going to do something different that almost every opponent you play is not used to.

So if you can learn the rules and the principles of Australian formation and you show up to your USTA league match or your junior USTA match and you go out and play that style and other teams aren't used to it, that's a massive advantage for you. The other beautiful thing about Australian formation is it helps you play to your strengths more often. So let's say I had an awesome backhand groundstroke, but a horrible forehand groundstroke.

When I'm in the deuce court, it would make sense to play more Australian with the net player on my side of the net. That way after my serve, I can run to the ad court and hit more backhands down the line. When I go to the ad court, we could just play regular formation. And that way I'm still in the ad court, hitting back hands cross, and that way I'm only playing to my strength and avoiding my weakness. And remember, you want to have as many tools in your toolkit as possible.

So if you show up in regular formation is your preferred strategy, but you're losing. Well, it would be nice if you had something else you could go to to flip the match or change it or make your opponents uncomfortable. So I would highly recommend practicing Australian formation. Get yourself in the corner of the court where you feel most comfortable and try to get there as often as possible. But if you can play one, two, or even three formations in a match, you have a massive advantage.

As always, thanks again for listening. I hope you just improved a tenants without even hit.